A few weeks back, I wrote about authors Laird Harrison and Jesus Angel Garcia, who are leveraging the social web to distribute excerpts of their novels in unusual ways. Now comes word that Neal Stephenson, with his new publishing startup Subutai, is attempting one of the boldest re-imaginings of the form to date with his novel The Mongoliad. The project by the author of Snow Crash and The Diamond Age is many things: a collaborative novel, a serialized tale, a wiki, and a multimedia experience told online and through apps for the iPad, iPhone, and Android phones. A collaboration between Stephenson and Greg Bear, Nicole Galland, Mark Teppo, and others, Subutai is billing The Mongoliad as ?an experiment in post-book publishing and storytelling.?

Newcomers “often don’t understand how badly we need you to lead the way,” he says. “If this is an area of concern to you,” he admonishes, “the way the Tea Party Patriots works is that you guys really lead the organization. We’re a relatively small group of people who are just trying to help coordinate. We’re not in charge; we’re not telling anybody what to do. You need to take a leadership role and stand up.” From “How the Tea Party Organizes without Leaders“

Here’s a really meaty, interesting interview with William Gibson, talking about his new novel — but also talking about what makes narrative tick, why inserting artifacts into the story makes books better, what happens when characters go rogue, and whether there’s such a thing as good fashion.

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This fall, more than 70 million students headed back to school in America, of which 50 million are going to public elementary and secondary schools, and a record 19.1 million are enrolled in colleges and universities. These students are wired as never before — in school, at home, and at every stop in between. It is now commonplace to see third-graders with their own cell phones, and even junior high schools expect students to work from a laptop with an Internet connection.

Algerian born scholar Mohammed Arkoun (February 1, 1928 ? September 14, 2010) was a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Ismaili Studies and also a member of its Board of Governors, which is chaired by His Highness the Aga Khan